Game usability

This is an excellent set of essays about all aspects of the
game experience. Despite the book's title, the analysis ranges far beyond "usability"
but includes all aspects of research during the development of a game, with
special attention to the experience being generated by the people playing the
game. There are 23 chapters covering a wide range of topics and approaches.

Randy Pagulayan and Dennis Wixon's Foreword describe the challenges
nicely: "the next evolution in games research will be .. focusing less on
cognitive states and emotional taxonomies, and more on opportunities for player
behaviors. Games can become complete worlds for our users, so now more that
ever we need to understand the interactions between the player and the
environment, understand the player's behavior within a virtual world, and understand
the player's ability to detect the infinite possibilities created for them." (Page x). Well said.

Even if you are not a game developer, this book should be
part of your arsenal: everything we design, everything we build, should incorporate
fun, delight, exploration, and surprise. Our devices become part of our lives,
not just virtual worlds, but real worlds. Game developers learn through
understanding how people interact with the real world: Application developers
learn by understanding how people interact within game worlds.